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Some mail processing could wind up going to KC; Study to be completed this spring; if it looks feasible, community meetings will be scheduled
In an effort to streamline operations, the U.S. Postal Service may be consolidating some Fort Scott operations with those in Kansas City, Mo.
An Area Mail Processing Study will help the postal service determine whether most mail processing should be moved from here to Kansas City, spokesman Richard Watkins said. The post office here will not be closed and any consolidation would not affect mail carriers, he said.
Watkins said he expects the feasibility study to be completed by late spring. He said he did not have a cost estimate for the study, but the staff of the Mid-America District based in Kansas City, does it.
The district covers most of central, western and southern Missouri and eastern Kansas, including Fort Scott and Pittsburg. "We've got less than a 10 percent slice of eastern Kansas. The rest of the state (such as Wichita and Topeka) is part of the Omaha-based Central Plains District," Watkins said.
The Fort Scott post office employs roughly 30 people. It has nine to 10 mail processors working at any given time.
AMPs have been conducted over the past several years, resulting in consolidations and millions in savings, he said.
"What we're looking into is whether it makes fiscal and operational sense to combine Fort Scott with the Kansas City, Mo., operation without degrading service," Watkins said.
From a peak of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006, mail volume has shrunk to 171 billion pieces, or 23 percent, most of which is first-class mail.
"The reason that's important is it's our most profitable product ... and b, that's what's primarily sorted at our mail processing centers," Watkins said. Advertising mail is presorted, he noted.
"If it makes business sense for us to move forward with that, then that's what we'll propose," he said. If USPS decides consolidation is a viable option, a community meeting will be conducted.
"Even at that point, it won't be a done deal, because we have to take our customers' comments into consideration," Watkins said.
The most recent consolidation was combining Kansas City with Kansas City, Mo., in 2008. By merging those operations and eliminating duplication, the postal service saved more than $9 million. "If you replicate that nationwide in places big, medium and small, that's where the Fort Scotts come into play. The Fort Scott post office will still be there. Some mail processing jobs will be shifted up to Kansas City, Mo.," Watkins said.
USPS took in $67 billion last year, 35 percent of which comes from sources other than brick-and-mortar post offices, like buying stamps from automatic teller machines, or shipping through Office Depot locations. This has led to fewer customer visits to post offices.
The postal service loses $23 million "every day of the week," Watkins said.
In 2010, USPS lost $8.5 billion in 2010, mostly due to a law that says the postal service must prefund employee benefits. The postal service will have paid almost $5.6 billion a year for this between 2007 and 2016," Watkins said. "No other government agency is required to prefund employee benefits at that level. We're also not tax supported and we want to keep it that way. We're coming up our $15 billion borrowing limit with the federal treasury. We're looking at everything. We're looking at consolidating post offices, closing stations and branches. We're not just taking out small rural post offices, we're looking at consolidating routes and lease terms at post offices around the country.
"Seventy-five percent of post offices around the country are leased facilities," Watkins said. On some, he said, the post office is paying "way more than fair market value" due to the depressed real estate market.
On the bright side, the post office has seen an uptick in standard mail -- or advertising pieces.
"That's a good thing," Watkins said. "(It's an) indication the economy is slowly but surely turning around. It takes three pieces of advertising mail to make up for every piece of first-class mail that we lose. They get a discount because they do a lot of the work before winds up at the post office."
On a separate note, talk of discontinuing Saturday delivery will take a change in the law.